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Erik: How do you use your network to get help making career and life decisions?
Jason: I don't think that I actively seek career and life decisions from my network,
and from my friends and my family and my colleagues in a -- with a direct goal of, "here's my
life problem and how should I fix that?" Or "here's my career goal, how do I get to that
goal?" And I think is a very indirect process for me. I wonder to myself a lot if everybody
acts how I act, when I do a specific thing, I think of this, like I will be like, hey,
you know, I haven't talked to this guy in a long time. And I have this feeling that
I should do that. And so I'll send him a note -- out of the blue, maybe I haven't talked
to him in 3 years and I don't know why I'm sending him a note, I'm just saying, hey,
what's up? And I wonder to myself, do a lot of people do that? Do a lot of people keep
in touch with people when they keep in touch -- and when they say that they're gonna keep
in touch. I think that they don't but I wonder if, you know, that's how I sort of indirectly
draw from my network, like I will have life problems and career goals or career problems
but I won't come out and directly seek answers to those problems, but I will constantly be
having lunch with this guy and talking to this person, and shooting a bunch of emails
back and forth with this, and chatting on Facebook and through that, different topics
come up and I think I amalgamate all these conversations together, which then allow me
to focus on maybe some life problems or life goals or career problems or career goals and
move past the impasse or get to achieve the goal based upon some of the conversations
and things that I've had. I would think that you're somebody who does that. Like, when
you're sitting there and you're like, "Oh, you know what, I should send so and so a note
because I haven't talked to him in 2 years and blah, blah, blah." And the next thing
you know you're having lunch with that person because you sent a note to that person. I
find a lot of times that -- Like, my friend, my good friend that maybe I don't see that
often, will be like we gotta get together, we should have dinner. I'm like, we definitely
should have dinner. I'm always the guy who sends the note to say, let's have dinner on
Tuesday and make that happen. I very rarely feel that I get the note that says, "Dude,
that was awesome seeing you on the street the other day, we should really have dinner.
How about Tuesday?" I'm sort of the catalyst for it. So I use the network, my network by
constantly being engaged with it. As opposed to engaging with it when I need an answer.